ight one day find Loewestein dull, or the air of the place unhealthy,
or the gin bad, and leave the fortress, and take his daughter with him,
when Cornelius and Rosa would again be separated.

"Of what use would the carrier pigeons then be?" said Cornelius to Rosa,
"as you, my dear girl, would not be able to read what I should write to
you, nor to write to me your thoughts in return."

"Well," answered Rosa, who in her heart was as much afraid of a
separation as Cornelius himself, "we have one hour every evening, let us
make good use of it."

"I don't think we make such a bad use of it as it is."

"Let us employ it even better," said Rosa, smiling. "Teach me to read
and write. I shall make the best of your lessons, believe me; and, in
this way, we shall never be separated any more, except by our own will."

"Oh, then, we have an eternity before us," said Cornelius.

Rosa smiled, and quietly shrugged her shoulders.

"Will you remain for ever in prison?" she said, "and after having
granted you your life, will not his Highness also grant you your
liberty? And will you not then recover your fortune, and be a rich man,
and then, when you are driving in your own coach, riding your own horse,
will you still look at poor Rosa, the daughter of a jailer, scarcely
better than a hangman?"

Cornelius tried to contradict her, and certainly he would have done so
with all his heart, and with all the sincerity of a soul full of love.

She, however, smilingly interrupted him, saying, "How is your tulip
going on?"

To speak to Cornelius of his tulip was an expedient resorted to by her
to make him forget everything, even Rosa herself.

"Very well, indeed," he said, "the coat is growing black, the sprouting
has commenced, the veins of the bulb are swelling, in eight days hence,
and perhaps sooner, we may distinguish the first buds of the leaves
protruding. And yours Rosa?"

"Oh, I have done things on a large scale, and according to your
directions."

"Now, let me hear, Rosa, what you have done," said Cornelius, with as
tender an anxiety as he had lately shown to herself.

"Well," she said, smiling, for in her own heart she could not help
studying this double love of the prisoner for herself and for the black
tulip, "I have done things on a large scale; I have prepared a bed as
you described it to me, on a clear spot, far from trees and walls, in a
soil slightly mixed with sand, rather moist than dry without a fragment
of st